Tibetans Reach Homes In Connecticut Tonight

When Dicki Gyamcho's mother left Tibet in 1959, a decade after the Chinese annexed the country, it was in a pickup truck that she drove across the Himalayas into India.

This week Gyamcho, who was born eight years after her mother's emigration, will help five other Tibetans along a smoother road to a new home. The five, coming to Connecticut as part of the Tibetan Resettlement Project, are among 1,000 Tibetans in exile who have been granted permanent resident status in the United States.

The first five Tibetans are scheduled to arrive in Connecticut tonight, having been routed through Chicago and into New York's LaGuardia Airport. They will settle in Old Saybrook, Milford and West Haven.

Nineteen more will settle in Connecticut in the next year, when the total number of Tibetans in the United States is expected to triple, to 1,500.

The Tibetan Resettlement Project, made possible last year when Congress passed a bill allowing 1,000 Tibetans to become permanent residents, will help match the immigrants with sponsors and employers; each Tibetan must have a job waiting to participate in the program.

Most of the immigrants, who range from laborers to professionals, will be working in restaurants, nurseries and factories, said Gyamcho, 25, a public relations officer for Pepperidge Farm Inc. in Norwalk whose family moved from India to Montreal when she was 4.

"They come with the understanding that they have to have a job," she said. "This is their first job [in the United States] but it is not their last job."

Drawn by America's economic opportunities, the 1,000 Tibetan immigrants, who were chosen by lottery from 4,000 to 5,000 applicants, have a moral obligation to stay with their first jobs long enough so the employer who has offered them a chance has a fair deal, Gyamcho said.

Jonathan Park, one of the owners of the Saybrook Fish House, is a critical link for three of the five Tibetans arriving tonight: He will employ the woman moving to Old Saybrook at his restaurant's Old Saybrook branch and employ the two men moving to Milford at his

restaurant there. They will do prep work in the kitchen, bus tables and take on more responsibility as they prove capable of it, he said.

Park, who has traveled extensively in India and Nepal and spent time with Tibetans in exile in 1981, is typical of the sponsors and employers participating in the resettlement project: He is a humanitarian, Gyamcho said, and one with a personal interest in the Tibetans' plight.

"I've been there," Park said. "It's not just something I read about in a book."

Tibetans lost their independence in 1950, when the Chinese invaded and began systematically dismantling Tibet's government and stripping Tibetans of their cultural identity.

It is easy to become fast friends with Tibetans; in a few months' time, Park said, he became close with many and they with him.

"I'm probably a little biased, but they are the friendliest people you could ever meet," said David Brown of Old Saybrook, a teacher who is host for Lhakpa Phentok, a 23-yearold Tibetan teacher. "They don't believe in getting angry."

Brown, who has traveled in India and Nepal during the past 20 years and taught Tibetans in a refugee camp in Nepal, absorbed some of the Tibetan culture. His house on Ingham Hill Road, which is decorated with Tibetan art, has no electricity and no running water, although an indoor water pump "by Indian standards is running water," he said.

The house could either be welcoming and familiar to Phentok or a disappointment, Brown said. "I'm worried that [she is] going to get here and say, `Where's the TV? That's what [I] came for,' " he joked.

The two men immigrating to Milford are Jhampa Tseondu, a 33-yearold painter with a wife and four children aged 3 to 13, and Ngawang Dhondup, a 26-year-old astrologer. The First Congregational Church in Milford is sponsoring them.

In West Haven, Dexter Eldridge, an engineer with an interest in Tibet, will be host to Namlha, a 28-year-old calligrapher, and Ngawang Choedar, a 22-year-old woodcarver.

Sponsors are looking for winter clothes, household appliances, furniture and bicycles to ease the Tibetans' immigration. Anyone with donations is asked to call Dicki Gyamcho at 846-7271 or 426-8479 or David Brown at 388-9587